Jan. 29, 2026

154: Stop the Energy Drain: Productivity Coaching for Vets in Clinic Chaos. With Demir Bentley and Dr Ray Gates

154: Stop the Energy Drain: Productivity Coaching for Vets in Clinic Chaos. With Demir Bentley and Dr Ray Gates
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Season 1

Veterinary life can feel like a treadmill with no off-switch: 15-minute consults that always run over. Emotional labour no one trains you for. A schedule that swings from slow to chaos - in minutes.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

In this raw and refreshingly real episode, productivity coach Demir Bentley (Life Hack Method) live-coaches GP vet Dr Ray Gates, tackling the uncomfortable truth of veterinary medicine:You’re expected to be clinically excellent… while running on empty.

This isn’t a listicle of “10 productivity hacks.”This is about reclaiming 1% wins that actually work in the chaos of clinical life.

You’ll learn:

  • Why productivity isn’t about doing more - it’s about protecting your energy
  • How “chaos as the default” leads to burnout (and how you can change the system, not just yourself)
  • How to lower your cognitive load and reduce admin fatigue
  • The art of setting goals that don’t become another source of stress
  • Small upstream shifts that stop downstream disasters
  • How to finish a shift and still feel like you

Whether you’re buried in charting, stuck in overbooked consults, or silently wondering if you’re just not “resilient enough” - this conversation will show you another way.

You don’t need another motivational quote.You need practical tools to get your time, headspace, and energy back.

And it starts here.

 

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Find out how we can help you build you in your vet career at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thevetvault.com⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Topics and Time Stamps

10:56 The problem

23:04 The revenge binge

26:10 Taking back the 1%

35:52 Upstream changes to prevent downstream chaos

41:31 Expectations vs reality

52:05 You are not powerless

Beyond Busy: The True Point of Productivity
Last week I saw this SOS for help in a vet chat group.
It starts with Am I the only one?
I forget the exact wording, but the message that followed encapsulates the frustration of trying to be everything to everyone in a vet clinic so perfectly that it put a lump in my throat.
The anonymous vet lists the problems, nothing feels easy, client expectations, trying to be thorough, being a good communicator, never feeling good enough, all in 15 minute time blocks.
Which is why I'm so excited to get this episode about personal productivity out into the world.
Because as you'll hear, you're not alone.
I'm Ebert Hemstrett and you are listening to The Vet Vault, where we embrace the challenges of vet life, but we refuse to tolerate things that can be done better.
Our guest is Tamir Bentley, a recovered workaholic and a productivity coach at Live Hack.
And with Demir's help, we've created an episode that is a bit different to our normal episodes.
For many, I guess most of you, better productivity means how do I get through my workload on the clinic floor?
How do I see many patients and do 7 procedures and do a great job of client coms and clinical records and and and without losing my mind and still get out on time and see my friends and have a life?
Speaker 2
Here's what I see as an outsider number one with vets.
Chaos is the default, not the exception, right?
You know you're walking in every day to a packed consult list, walk in to emergencies, surgeries are running along you.
Sometimes you're squeezing in a euthanasia between something extremely mundane, huge emotional load, and then just walking right in and talking to a receptionist about trying to slot just one more thing into your schedule.
Speaker 1
Does that sound familiar?
So I thought instead of this episode being another one where we discussed my problems, let's get one of you on.
So we sent out a message and Doctor Ray Gates put up his hand with an oh hell yeah I could use some help with productivity and the scene was set.
So here's what this episode is.
Doctor Ray, a vet who is well and truly in the thick of things being coached by Damir world class productivity coach on what specifically was Ray can pull in the vet clinic to give himself some breathing room.
Now this is not just generic productivity stuff.
We get deep into the vet specific weeds that as you'll hear, you will be all too familiar with.
I hope you find this as useful as I did.
I think you will.
Oh, by the way, if you have an idea for a topic that you would personally like help with, shoot me an e-mail at info@thevetvo.com.
I won't roll my eyes, I promise, and we will find someone smart to help us work through it together.
But for now, please enjoy Doctor Ray Gates and Demir Bentley.
Why, why?
Why productivity?
What's the point?
Is it just so we can do more shit then be busier and make more money?
Why do?
Why are we even talking about this?
Why did you get passionate about it?
Speaker 2
It's, it's funny because I think people assume that since I'm a productivity coach that I'm going to say, oh, this is the best thing in the world and you should love this.
And actually, people are surprised to hear me say, no, productivity is as boring as bricks.
And I, I'm not here to convince you that it's not.
You know, my key value is freedom in life and resilience.
If you've got freedom of resilience, there's very little you can't do.
And it just so happens that being able to rely on yourself, having the right work flows and systems to bring out the best in yourself and just sort of get work done in a small package so you can get back to being a real person.
That's the number one tool that puts your tires against the pavement and gives you that friction to move forward in your life.
So yes, this stuff is incredibly boring.
I happen to find it exciting or after years of doing it, but I will completely concede to the layman that, you know, it looks boring from the outside.
And I'll, I'll, I'll spoil the ending.
It is boring on the inside too.
But what you get after you've done it is days where you can get home and turn off and be with your kids or the time to go on vacation without your team, you know, send you crazy messages when you're on your Italian vacation.
We don't know where that thing is.
So that's why I love productivity.
Freedom of resilience.
Speaker 1
So podcast making 101 is you have to have a strong hook within the first few seconds so that the listeners keep listening saying this it's boring is not a good, so it's boring, but keep listening, Don't go anywhere.
I like that you say to me so that you can rely on yourself.
That's actually a great way to put it.
I read A blog once.
That's that.
Wait, but why blog?
I don't know if you come across it, but there's a phenomenal blog in there about procrastination and which I, I suppose you could apply the same principles to.
If you're not, if you don't have good productivity systems.
The principle in that was that you today, you're not the same person as you tomorrow and you next week.
It's got, it's a different human being, right?
That person is going to be in the present in that moment and me today procrastinating or in this case being disorganized.
I'm screwing over future human.
I'm saying, all right, I'm having I'm having a crazy day today.
I don't feel like doing this stuff.
But you bet 5 days from now you're gonna have double the problem.
You're gonna have to deal with it.
And is the point was, would you do that to somebody else, like to a stranger?
No, you're probably going to be more considerate.
And it's actually just a case of being more considerate to your future self.
So I like that view of productivity potentially saying, well, let's have good system so that tomorrow's you, but doesn't have a really shitty day.
Speaker 2
I love it, but you know, we're not here for my story, we're here for raise.
But the short version of my story is I went from working 80 to 100 hours on Wall Street making, you know, 6 figures to working less than 20 hours a week making multi 7 figures.
And that was a journey in productivity.
So if somebody's looking for the real wow factor in productivity, you know, all the cash and prizes that you're looking for in life.
Can you make more money if you're more productive?
Absolutely.
Can you get more time because people love time?
Absolutely.
Can you get more recognized?
Can you move your mission into the world?
100%.
All of these end up stemming back to can you sit down at your desk and organize yourself in a way where you can move yourself forward?
Speaker 1
I'm excited to learn for selfish reasons, but as you say, today is about Ray.
The Overwhelming Reality of Veterinary Practice Life
Ray.
Tell us the story of Ray and why you feel like you need to miss help.
Speaker 3
Well, I guess it's, it's tough to start.
I guess to start off, I do have ADHD.
So that's always been a balancing act for me.
So one of the things that I've always tried to do is be productive really is because that's like my main struggle in life because I procrastinate a lot.
I don't.
I just think I push things off.
I'm not very considerate to my future self.
Basically, like you said, Hugh, I've always wanted to be a veterinarian.
That's been my goal in life and that's what I've worked towards pretty much most of my life.
There's no way I would have gotten there if I hadn't properly learned to start managing my ADHD.
But I do still struggle with it a lot.
And working as a vet, I do feel like when I'm at my job, I can be quite productive.
I can move quite quickly.
But then outside of it, that all seems to kind of fall apart and I lose that motivation to kind of get things done very quickly.
And I guess maybe part of it is because I don't have as many people relying on me to be productive.
I don't know if that's the difference here, but.
Speaker 2
Well, Ray, you did an awesome thing in advance of this call, which is you actually filled out my pre call coaching survey.
So what I'm going to do if I can step in.
So I'm going to sort of take a shot at describing you based on what you told me.
And then that could be a good jumping off point where you could fill in some blanks that maybe I'm missing.
So here's what I know about Ray so far.
You are a 33 year old small animal GP veterinarian in Sydney.
You work crushingly long hours, 10 to 12 hour shifts.
Some weeks include full weekends.
You live with your partner who's also a full time vet.
You are maintaining US relationships remotely, which is always going to be hard and include a lot of early morning and late night calls.
You have a bodybuilding lifestyle in your personal life, which just means that for me as a productivity coach means that your central nervous system is probably pretty tapped a lot if you're doing heavy lifts and you're at the gym quite a bit, but also means that you're probably in great shape.
So it's probably positives and negatives on that side.
You're probably in great shape, but also you're tapping out your central nervous system quite a bit.
So you're a vet, your partner, your son, your friend.
The schedule is punishingly rigid and front loaded.
You are getting up sometimes at 3:30 AM to go to the gym, sometimes 4 1/2 hours before you work.
There's no discretionary space at work.
Lots of context switching, lots of emotional labor decision making, sort of the classic ingredients for ADHD.
Overwhelmed.
In fact, I was quite impressed that somebody with ADHD went into the veterinary field because, as I'll describe in a second, it is just an absolute crush of cognitive dissonance and cognitive overload.
So how does that sound so far?
Am I on the right?
Am I barking up the right tree?
Speaker 3
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2
Awesome if you could get just one thing from this session.
And you don't have to even know the answer to this question, but I'm just going to ask it anyways.
If you could just get like one awesome thing from the session, what would it be?
Speaker 3
I guess a good starting point to improving my just my feeling of timelessness really.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah.
Quick follow up question.
I think I know the answer, but I just want to see do are you a practice owner or are you working in a practice that's owned by somebody?
Speaker 3
I'm an employee.
Speaker 2
OK, got it.
For anybody who's listening that bounced this conversation because on the positive, that means you're also not trying to be a small to mid sized business owner.
But on the negative, it means that, you know, as I'm giving advice, there's certain advice that you might not be able to integrate because you don't own the practice and you might not have full discretion to change how things are done inside the practice.
So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
There might be some things where you're like, that's not really my call to put something like that to work.
Sound fair?
Let me just start with what I know, Ray, about veterinarians.
As someone who's worked the last 11 years and weirdly got it started with a strong background in veterinarians.
There was one woman from the UC Davis Correct Shelter Medicine program who took my coaching early on and told all of our friends to come in.
And so I've done a weirdly large amount of coaching with veterinarians.
And here's what I see as an outsider.
And remember, I am an outsider.
Number one with vets, chaos is the default, not the exception, right?
You know, you're walking in every day to a pack consult list, walk in to emergencies, surgeries are running along you.
Sometimes you're squeezing in a euthanasia between something extremely mundane, huge emotional load, maybe talking somebody down who's just let go of like a member of their family and then just walking right in and talking to a receptionist about trying to slot just one more thing into your schedule.
So just what I've seen from the outside is one the types of work that you bounce between inside of a day is just it could be admin to something technical to something logistical to something emotional.
Does that resonate with am I?
Am I seeing it from the right on the outside?
Speaker 3
Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate.
So how my day goes?
Speaker 1
OK, I'm going to add a little bit of extra context.
You seem surprised that he that we got an ADHD vet.
My personal experience from now that it is a conversation out there and speaking to a lot of vets, neuro divergent is a big thing in our profession.
So there's there's something with the link with working with animals.
I think a lot of vets think that, oh, I'm going to work with animals and then neglect the fact that it's very people, heavy and often intelligent people, right?
They they can power through the the struggles that they have to get through the degree because clearly, Ray, you are able to focus because you got through a vet degree and there's a lot of sitting on your ass and just getting stuff done.
But we was our way through it.
So that just to add another lay there.
So I bet that a lot of people listening to this, they're going, oh, Yep, Yep, Ray's describe me.
That's, that's yeah, I have, I have this challenge.
And then exactly that environment that you just described bad systems, which is a big issue.
As you say, we offered powerless to do anything about it as employees.
A lot of chaos.
Exactly what you said, spot on.
Speaker 2
So, so really quickly I'll touch on some of the other things that I think are worth mentioning, right.
So we talked about a massive emotional load, right?
Euthanizing a long time patient or, you know, managing an angry client or just having an impossible choice, you know, giving an impossible choice to people who can't afford care, right.
So it's just a huge emotional load, which sometimes I think a lot of my doctors and veterinarians don't always clock because they have sort of put a wall up.
But so they don't clock how much it's costing them energetically because they are sort of moving on to the next thing.
But it's sort of have paid a price, as it were.
Again, you know, the workflow is just really distracting and brutal, right?
You're moving between diagnostics and procedural tasks and documentation and client communication and collaboration.
And it's just really fatiguing, right?
And we know about human beings that we're not multitaskers, we're actually just rapid single taskers, and that we, it costs us a lot to move from type work A to type work B.
And the veterinary world is just riddled with that.
I mean, people are probably laughing when they're listening to this.
It's just thinking about the 40 or 50 different types of things they're bouncing between every single day.
And it has to happen that way.
And also, of course, long work weeks, right?
Irregular work weeks.
So it's hard to sort of know what you're in for until you're already sort of in it or already through it and really hard to make time.
I think you had mentioned that you were trying to make some time for some professional development.
Did I?
Did I make that up?
Speaker 3
No, you didn't make it up.
But yes, I am trying to make time for just, I have an interest in surgery, but I have an interest in everything.
So I have a hard time kind of like figuring out when to start.
So orthopedics is like kind of my, that's my main one.
I want to learn orthopedic surgery surgery in general.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
But then the way my mind thinks about it, it's like I've, it's such a, a big undertaking to kind of do the CPD for it or the continuing education.
And then I don't know when to start because I have something else going on that's going to be happening soon.
And it's just like kind of like snowballs in a way.
Just getting that taking that first step is difficult.
Speaker 2
Yep, I get it.
Well, and where are you going to find the time Ray in, in that world that I just described, right, Working super long hours, getting up at 3:30 in the morning, right?
Incredible cognitive load.
You know, I, I just wanted to just take a pause to mention that.
And I think before we get started coaching together and I've got a couple things that I came pre loaded to talk to you about.
You know, I think there's a lot of self blame because the vet profession really has this sort of hero mindset, right?
I'm supposed to be the hero, never make mistakes, carry the load for everybody, stay late, you know, be strong for the team.
And so there is a feeling like if you're getting to the end of yourself, like, hey, why can't I go further?
Why can't I be the person who does this?
Or why couldn't I have created that outcome or why did I make that mistake, right?
And it's like not a shock that, as you know, I'm sure anybody who's listening, one of the highest self harm rates among professions is veterinarians.
So, you know, not to make things heavy people, but this is real stuff and it's serious and it's you're not alone if you're out there feeling this.
So thank you again, Ray.
I just wanted to take a moment to just make sure that like we were speaking the same language.
Do you feel generally from hearing what I'm saying that I'm for an outsider more or less get it and understand what you're facing.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, so far it sounds fairly accurate.
So the my profession.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's an inherently overwhelming profession with insanely long hours.
I just want to observe one thing, Ray.
One of the things that we have supporting us when we are working long hours is that we can often get into a bit of a high cortisol fight or flight state where the very thing that I was describing, the cognitive dissonance or the cognitive overwhelm, it's stimulation, right?
So you're always getting hit by something new, new, new, new, new.
So that sense of I don't know what I'm walking into next, I'm flying by the seat of my pants.
Can I get it done?
Can I be the hero who sort of lands the plane here in the midst of like 2 flaming engines?
That is stimulation.
And a lot of my clients who have extremely stimulating high chaos environments will go home and be like, well, why am I completely comatose when I get home?
And I just want to be clear, sometimes we are motivated and getting work done from a place that's essentially more of a fight or flight state than it is a positive leaned in state.
And so of course there's going to be this insane crash when you come home because what you've been doing is you've really been using extrinsic motivation, extrinsic accountability.
If I don't show up and I don't do this thing, then one of my patients is going to die.
That high level of tension and motivation is stimulating.
Is it good?
I'll let you be the judge, but it is definitely stimulating.
So no wonder then we go home and we can't get off the couch, right Or we go home and we can't, you know, motivate to, you know, do this professional development that you're talking about.
We've been we've sort of put ourselves through that.
So I just want to make sure that people we aren't mistaking the difference between, you know, an external stimulus that's driving us into a plate of sort of high level of cortisol and fight or flight that's getting us to get the job done versus say, Oh, I'm great.
Why am I great at and just boil it down, I don't want you asking the question of yourself.
Why am I so great at work?
And I just like I'm on and I just get the thing done and then I go home and I just can't access that.
Well, you've effectively got a gun to your head at work, right?
And you've got this high level of stimulation.
So of course, and of course you're going to pay the price when you come home.
I'm going to pass the mic to you, Raymond.
How does that land with you when I say it like that?
Speaker 1
Well.
Speaker 3
I think you've perfectly described how someone with ADHD finds motivation.
We get a lot of our motivation and drivers through our fight or flight system.
So fear deadlines.
So that's my procrastinate.
That's just me and my ADHD.
Mine getting ready to be like, all this is due soon.
And then that's that.
Like that scramble and that fear of not meeting the deadline is what gets me to do the work.
So it, that kind of external driver is how I feel is how I get most things done at work because it's like I gotta I'm, I'm kind of like effectively body doubling.
But with the, the, the client that I'm working with that and their pet and the other vets, it's like AI can't let these people around me down.
So let's get this done.
Speaker 2
Yeah, totally.
So here's 2 angles that I think we can come at this from that can give you something that you can grab onto and maybe take away from today.
Overcoming Revenge Binge with 1% Productivity Hacks
The first angle is just this idea of it really comes from the Stoics, right?
The Stoics teach us don't focus on the 99% of the problem that you can't fix, focus on the 1% of the problem that you can.
I do have a lot of clients.
I have a client in crisis management PR, for example.
You can imagine that when her phone rings.
There's not a happy person on the other side.
This person is going through a once in a lifetime terrible experience if that phone is ringing.
So there's so much that cannot be controlled in terms of how's this week going to go?
What am I going to face?
How intense is it going to be, right?
What systems in your case, you don't, you don't control the systems of the business.
So you know, what systems am I operating in?
It can be very easy in that kind of situation to just sort of say, well, what's the point?
You know, I'll just let myself float out to the ocean to get rolled around by the waves because what's the point now?
I can't control 99% of this.
And in a weird way, when we can't control most of our environment, it becomes so important that we do control the bits that we can that what I call that 1%.
So I just encourage you overall to have a mindset where you so don't allowed yourself to stop fixating or focusing.
I don't know if you are, I don't want to fictionalize that, but don't fixate on the 99% you cannot control.
Focus in on the 1% that you can't.
So I'll just give you an example from a vet that I know.
I actually had a chance to call a couple of vets before I had this conversation.
One of the vets that I was talking to was saying that she had a audio dictation software for her notes, but she didn't like it because it just did the transcript.
It didn't actually do a summary, it just actually did word for word.
So she didn't use it, didn't really bother training in it, and then she would get behind sometimes on her charting almost two weeks.
So she's trying to remember 2 weeks ago, what's that?
She's like, I don't remember this person, I don't remember this animal, I don't remember this situation.
She's spending a tremendous amount of cognitive load trying to re piece together some kind of context so that she can at least do a semblance of her professional duty here for her charting.
Right.
And by the way, you're nodding your head is, I'm not saying you've ever done that, you've never done that.
But like, do you know what I'm talking about here?
Yeah.
So the 1% for her was just to say, OK, maybe I don't love the word for word transcript, but wouldn't it be so much easier to do my charting if I had something there to go on like anything so that I could when I'm coming back, I've left myself a breadcrumb trail where I can actually piece this back together.
You know, hopefully you're not getting two weeks behind on your charting.
I assume you're not, but you get the point, right?
It's like a 1% thing.
And as it turned out, when she said it was literally a button that had to be activated, it was that simple.
It's just something that in her busy crush of life, she just hadn't bothered doing.
Let me just pause as I say that.
Forget that specific example because that's just something I picked out.
Is there anything that comes to you right now where you think maybe this is something I should be doing?
It's small.
It's something within my control.
I don't do it as much as I should or I don't do it ever.
And that is a place where I could exercise control.
Speaker 3
In all honesty, probably going to bed sooner.
Speaker 2
Yeah, talk to me about that.
Speaker 3
I often get home fairly late.
So like I guess most nights it's going to be like 9:00 PM ish around then 8/8/30, 9:00 PM.
And then it's kind of like the small amount of me time that I have or the time I can spend with my partner.
And in my mind, I kind of like that's the time I want to take back.
So instead of just feeling like a cog in a wheel, waking up in the morning, just working, then coming home, going to bed, that time is like something to take back.
So I will eat dinner and hang out with my partner, but then my partner will go to bed and then I'll stay up and do something stupid, watch the show, play a video game.
I don't know, it's whatever I feel like doing at the time.
But then that ends up I'm going to bed at probably like midnight one.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
I mean, if you're getting up at 4I presume you're not going at midnight, going to sleep at midnight on the days when you're getting up at 4:00 to go to the gym or is that?
Speaker 3
Sometimes, sometimes it can come close to that, like I'll go to bed at 11, still only five hours of sleep.
Speaker 2
Yeah, So welcome to the revenge binge, right?
You've been so disciplined.
You're getting up early, you're working out, you're doing your job.
Here we are.
Willpower's low at the end of the day.
Revenge binge I've.
Speaker 3
Never heard it called that but I think I'll start.
Speaker 2
You know, one of the things that I do that's really interesting is we can put some speed bumps in front of bad behavior.
So you think about the environment and you know, those little timers that you plug into the wall and you can plug your lamp into them and they, they were sort of on certain hours, they'll turn on the power.
Those turn off the power.
I plugged my Wi-Fi router into one of those and my Wi-Fi downstairs would go off at like 10 O clock every night.
And it seemed like it was a mystery to me.
Every single night I would turn to my wife and be like, well, what is going on?
Is your Internet not working?
She was like, yeah, it went out, dummy.
And yes, I could go turn it back on, but I'd have to get up.
I'd have to get out of my bed, leave my room, go downstairs, you know, hit the master router and switch back on it.
You know, it's just too lazy.
And I realized in that moment I was tired.
So instead of me telling you something banal, like, oh, you should just definitely try to go to sleep more.
It's like, believe me, I've been there.
When you're in the middle of a revenge binge, it's hard to pull yourself out.
But if we could create an extrinsic motivator, an extrinsic barrier, it can be just enough.
I'm not saying it'll work every night, but it can be just enough for you to sort of say, you know what, I am tired.
Maybe I will go to bed.
Maybe this is a good signal to sort of pop me out of my stupor and just make me think, OK, I need to get to bed here.
This is crazy.
It's also a little bit of an alarm clock to sort of say, oh, is it really 10 already?
Now I want to circle back to the 1% concept and just talk about maybe some more vet specific examples of this, right.
One of my vets had there's something called, what's it called keyboard shortcuts.
And a lot of computers have it where you could sort of precompose snippets and you could say hashtag, you know, COM and it could put your regular communication module in there.
And So what she effectively did was she built out a lot of the snippets that would go into her regular charting as keyboard shortcuts.
So that as she was going through her, you know, writing out her chart and taking her notes, she was just making it a little bit faster to get something in there, just a little bit faster to put those, pull those notes together.
So it's just an example of something we can control, right?
Another vet that I was working with, because one of the common phrases that I heard was I can't keep my consults on track, right?
And of course, when we've got an emotional client who likes to talk, you know, how are you going to keep that on track?
One of the sort of phrases that you can mention at the top is, hey, we've got limited amount of time together.
So just to make sure that we can make the most of this time, Would you mind if I ask for permission to interrupt you?
Not to annoy you, just to make sure that we make the most of this time together and do the best for, you know, little Rex here or, you know, Mr. Ham Sandwich or whatever it is.
So you're asking for permission at the top to interrupt somebody, which at that time doesn't feel offensive because you've just started the conversation, but it becomes really handy when they do start to get destroyed time and you need to interrupt them.
So you sort of secure that permission at the top and you can come back in later and say, hey, sorry to interrupt you.
Just like I said, I might interrupt you.
Do you mind if I ask this follow up?
So you're actually giving yourself, your preloading that permission, these small things that you can do.
And again, you know, how much time does that save you?
You know, who knows?
But you're doing so many consults a day.
If you can keep two or three consults on track that might have gone off track, that can really have a little bit of a 1%, you know, domino fall into the rest of your day.
If two or three of those consults stay on track versus getting off track.
Or for example, you know, batch reading all your labs at once, you know, setting a time or a couple times a day to sit down instead of getting those interruptions.
So let me toss it to you as I say that, and we're thinking actually about the work as it happens at work.
Does this shake anything loose for you to think?
What are those little 1% things that I could do to just clean back a little bit of control in my work day?
Speaker 3
I've, I've already like you were saying earlier about the the snippets and the shortcuts with notes.
I've actually done that quite extensively.
So that's one area that I've kind of regained control back a little bit, but I also use AI to nice take my notes now and I've written a bunch of templates out for that that will do that for me.
And I just edit things so I can actually just pay attention to the client in the console room.
I don't have to touch the computer while they're talking.
Speaker 1
I have to jump in here.
This, I think, is huge.
As many of you would know, I'm big on experimenting with AI to see how I can move the needle on the 1%.
And what I'm seeing is that it's more like 10 to 20% or more.
Ray is talking about AI note taking, but the possibilities are way beyond that.
I believe this so much that I'm working on a project to help myself and you other vets figure out how to best utilize this absolute avalanche of new tech tools that's rushing our way to make a meaningful difference in not only our productivity as a vet or a clinic owner, but also our Wellness and the Wellness of our teams.
And how can we use it to be better at our jobs, which ultimately is providing excellent care to animals?
I'm working on a community for vets and practice owners who would like to learn with me in a sort of a mash up between a mastermind group and a course.
But before I commit days and weeks to doing this, I'd love to know from you whether this is a worthwhile endeavour.
If you think it is and you would like to hear more about it when I have more details for you, go to yespleaseyou.com.
I just built that little e-mail capture landing page in 10 minutes with the help of AI.
I can teach you how.
That's yes and please.
And my name, Hugh.
Hugh all mashed into oneword.com.
If that's too hard, I'll put a link for you in the show description.
OK, back to Demir Andre.
Speaker 3
I actually have I feel a problem which maybe some won't say it's a problem but I feel like it can be sometimes is that I will try and mush all of the problems that the owner brings to me and fix them in that single console and that will extend the consult significantly.
And it's just it's, I feel like I don't want to half ass each problem, but I feel like that's what exactly what happens.
Speaker 2
Yeah, You know, it's interesting.
I, I was talking about that sentence earlier that can I have your permission to interrupt, not to annoy, just to make sure that we can do the best we can with the time we have.
Sometimes a really well composed sentence can really smooth the path.
So I wonder if you could work with ChatGPT a little bit or your AI to come up with that perfect sentence that sounds something like, hey, you know what we have time to do today is we can do A&B&C today, but I'm going to have, you know, Marcy outside work with you to schedule a follow up for D&F&G.
How's that sound for you, right, that that sort of precomposed memorized sentence that allows you that permission and you're securing their buy in too.
You're saying, hey, why don't we handle these things?
We could really do that in the time we have.
I'm going to get more city schedule for your follow up for DC and then or whatever it might be.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I love that you brought that topic up because it just nails the concept that we're talking about.
And for anybody listening, what are we talking about here?
Category 1 is just where's that 1% where we can exercise some control?
And if we can really focus in on that and collect all of those one percents, what we'll always find, it's just a little bit like a thread.
You think to yourself, well, this is the only 1% I can control.
Once you control that, you'll see that another 1% manifests itself.
Oh, you know what?
I could also do this.
Once you've done that, you know what, I guess I could also do this.
So there's just these little things.
You can also start to look outside of your immediate range of control.
I had a vet who was working at a shelter that she didn't own, and she realized they didn't have APDF that the client could read in the rating room about euthanasia.
They just walked.
Every single time a client came in, they were giving the same spiel over and over and over and over and over again.
And so she just took it upon herself.
Hey, do you mind if I actually go and create APDF, print out some pamphlets and just leave it in the waiting room?
And she asked the receptionist to say, hey, you know, when somebody's coming in and it's going to be euthanasia, can you have them read this while they're waiting and filling things out?
It just means they're going to come in a little better prep.
It could even be a send ahead e-mail if you know, somebody's coming in ahead of time to let go of a family member that they really care about right now.
Are they all going to read that?
Absolutely not.
But enough of them read it to really start to be that 1% easing of OK, I'm not having to do the same spiel over and over and over again.
So send aheads things they can breathe in the waiting room.
These are the kinds of things that could really support you in the room so that your session doesn't get extended.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I ask a question to me is the goal of trying to smooth out the work day, which exactly as you said, it is a cognitively raining day.
Ray said that he feels that he does well enough with work, it's the outside of work that that bothers him.
Is the goal that of tweaking this so that you don't have that extreme comatose feeling at the end of the work day and potentially get home an hour earlier?
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, it's not a wild guess to say that when somebody's working 10 to 12 hours a day, often over the weekends, there's no personal failing that's preventing him from showing up with energy in his personal life.
He's not showing up with energy in his personal life because he's just completely drained by work.
And So what we're doing is we're reclaiming some of that cognitive drain and that emotional drain and that intellectual drain at work.
Really funny thing.
I never would have thought that I would have said to somebody after 10 years of doing this productivity work is that I can have clients, we will work to reduce cognitive load inside of their workflow.
They will work the same exact amount of hours, but come home with more energy to do something after work.
So yes, I do want to get my clients working fewer hours, but I've actually worked with a lot of medical professionals where they're on a shift, they're going to work those hours no matter what.
You know, the hospital owns you for those hours.
And so the game when you're sort of hours are owned by, you know, the clinic or the hospital isn't like I'm going to get out early.
The game is how can I get through this with while preserving my emotional and cognitive load so that when I come back, I can be daddy, I can be husband.
I can actually want to go out to dinner with friends instead of being so drained that that just sounds terrible to me.
Speaker 1
With the revenge binge.
Speaker 2
Or the revenge bench, precisely.
So you know, that last one, Raymond, I think really pivots into the 2nd and it's a little bit out of your control, but you'd be surprised how much began it is in your control.
Managing Chaos with Upstream Changes and Expectations
So the second category would be what's happening upstream that's causing this to happen to you downstream.
A lot of times we think about a stressor or something that's suboptimal or, you know, for example, a console going long or console going wrong.
And we think about that as what could I have done in that moment to change that?
And often the answer is by that time it was too late.
By that time, that was the only way that that could have happened.
It was never going to go a different way because there was a chain event of things that went wrong to put that person in that place and create that situation that I then had to respond to.
So a lot of times it is actually virtually impossible for us to exercise power when we're trying to swing it from the now end of it.
What we can often do is go upstream 123 steps and ask ourselves, what could I have changed upstream a couple steps that wouldn't have just made that situation better will actually make the next fifty of those situations a little bit better.
So I sort of referenced this idea of, hey, can we do send aheads for some of the more emotionally taxing experiences that we have?
Could we do an e-mail send ahead?
Could we do a PDF send ahead?
Could we do a pamphlet in the office or even, you know, these kinds of these small things that could even just be one of my vets.
She didn't know how to tell her receptionist how to schedule her because it was just so chaotic.
What do you say to them?
Like what, How do you schedule the, the chaos?
So what she did was she came up with five good examples and five bad examples.
She went back about 10-12 weeks.
She found five weeks that went really well.
And she said, hey, I don't know what it was about how you stack this in, but I love this.
I love this, this flowed into this.
This worked really nicely with this.
And then she found five weeks that were just an absolute nightmare.
And she said, OK, this, this, this made it really, really hard for me.
And even though they didn't derive a hard and fast set of rules, just that exercise of going upstream and doing a little bit of extra training and a little bit of extra context sharing with the receptionist, She said that it just got so much better from there because it was that sharing of that information, Hey, this is a week like this can really hit me in a hard way.
So what's interesting about that kind of control is that's not really something you always have to ask for permission for.
So even people, I would say definitely if you're a vet, if you own a clinic, you absolutely want to be on this level looking not just at what went wrong, but what was two or three steps above what went wrong.
So that you can actually say, hey, this is my job as a vet owner to actually step two or three steps, 4 steps above.
But even as an employee, you could often collaborate with your Co workers and say, hey, do you think we could just tweak this a little bit, do it a little bit more like this instead of like this?
So summing that up, there's there's an impossibility of trying to control situations in the moment that are uncontrollable.
But sometimes when we take two or three steps upstream from that moment or back in time from that moment, we realize there is something that could have been controllable.
It'll never make that bad situation change that stunk.
We had to deal with that.
But we can change to the next fifty of those that happened.
Speaker 1
I really do love that Demire I found over the years.
So I've 25 years in practice and Raymond very much.
I was going to say start of my career.
All of your problems sound so familiar, but still, I still do shifts, clinical shifts and it's still far from perfect.
But a mind shift shift might set shift of feeling like a victim, feeling like these things are completely out of my control to me.
And often they are not completely out of your control.
You, you do have agency in saying, all right, there are these problems.
My boss is probably way too busy to even think about them.
They're not even aware that it's a problem.
What can I do?
What can I bring to the boss, to the rest of the team?
What systems can I help put in place?
Exactly as you say, How can I make it easier for myself?
And then a constant awareness.
And now it's become always an obsession for me at work when I do something and I get it, an inkling of irritation or frustration of this is taking me so long, I'm getting angry.
The question is immediately OK, but how can I do this better?
How can this whole process be easier?
And and then it's a question of, of having the time and energy to do it.
How which it brings us back to the main problem, But it it is just let me fix one thing.
What's the thing that drives me the craziest on shift?
And how can I make it just a little bit better for myself?
Speaker 2
Well, you spoke about ADHD and one of the things that people with ADHD are amazing at doing is when they're really fixated on something and sometimes that means they're pissed off or frustrated about it is they've got a lot of focus and energy to change that thing.
And let's not underestimate that sometimes these things don't take a huge amount of raw time to change.
So I often tell people, you know, that sort of really pissed off at energy that you have when something goes really wrong, that's actually a very productive energy, right?
Like that's a very, if you don't direct it at a Co worker and you don't direct it at yourself or the clinic owner, If you actually direct it at the problem, you can sort of say, you know what, screw this.
I never want a consult to go like that again, or I never want that mistake to happen again or I never want to have that experience again.
It's really motivating to step two or three steps above and say, what would we have to change or what would the smallest 1% change be that could either prevent that or make it a lot more bearable.
I want to check with you, Raymond, how is some of this landing right now and what are the big themes that are emerging for you?
Speaker 3
I guess, yeah, a lot of my day, what brings me a lot of stress is the fact of how unpredictable it is.
Because like I'll, I'll come out of a console and I'll think I have like maybe 10 minutes to do something and instead an emergency has been squeezed into that slot.
Or it's just, it's like a change to my preconceived.
Like this is like how I'm my day is going and it just, it throws me from the loop.
So that that's definitely a big one that kind of gets me.
I don't like being like flip-flopped and kind of like having to go to all these different things.
The weird thing is though, is if it's already chaotic, I do fine.
So what I feel that means for me is that if I have an expectation of chaos, then I I manage it fine.
If I don't have an expectation of chaos and I have a calm day, but then it turns into chaos and I get very stressed.
So if there's anything I think that would be a major like contributor to my cognitive overload through the day, it'd be those days that don't start off as chaotic.
So I don't know if mindset shift to expect chaos every single day would be healthy, but it seems like something that would maybe help a little bit in those instances.
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, again, the Stoic said primaritatio malorum, right?
The meditation on future evils.
So they encouraged us, instead of avoiding thinking about what could go wrong, they encouraged us to really in a frank and very clear way, ask ourselves what could go wrong here so we can be prepared for it.
And what can I do in advance to prepare for that, right?
And so I think the word that you used was expectation.
I don't know if you've heard the saying that expectations like pouring yourself with gas and hoping to God that nobody strikes a match, right?
It's like you could get away with it.
You could pour yourself with gasoline and walk outside and have your whole day and come home and be fine.
But if somebody strikes a match, you're in trouble.
And so having that expectation, gosh, I hope that this is a calm day.
And then it doesn't.
Well, the match has been struck.
So I don't think it's about, it sounds very defeatist to say, well, I'll just assume every day it's going to be chaos.
But I do think there's a positive twist on this, which is, hey, I need to open myself up to the possibility every day that there is a way that this day could go wrong and be ready for that and have it sort of lower my expectation down a little bit.
So now you're expecting that it could be chaos and you might find out as a nice treat that it wasn't right, rather than hoping that it'll be ordered and then getting lit on fire when it's not.
And I think expectations is actually a pretty high level of advanced mindset expectations management.
Throughout the course of your day, you stumbled on something that's pretty high level in terms of the productivity world, because when we can manage our expectations correctly, Deepak Chopra says set a goal and then remove the expectation from it, right?
So we set the goal.
I'd like to get this done today, but we're moving the expectation from it so that we don't get lit on fire in that way.
I think that could be very powerful practice for you.
I'm.
Speaker 3
Going to write that down.
Speaker 1
It's such a good insight.
You've absolutely nailed it.
Right because I've in my working career, my my clinical career, I've had many as AGP practice and many as an emergency practice.
Edit You are spot on.
It's the thing that drives me the maddest.
I'm back in GP now.
If my day is exit the start of the day and I if I have a plan, this is how I'm going to run my day and then something out of my control ruins it.
I but then an emergency.
I have none of that because it's all chaos.
Not chaos.
But there's no appointments, you know, we have no appointments.
I have no structure.
I walk in black slate.
Well, hit me with what you got.
And because the client's expectations are also, I don't have an appointment, so I'm going to wait for two hours if I have to wait for two hours.
So everybody's just like where we just get through the work.
And it's such a different emotional experience between the two.
It's like the days been when I was on call as AGP vet, I'd be so anxious and so angry when I do get a call at versus when you work in emergency.
Well, I'm here to be called at 2:00 in the morning, so I'm not going to get angry.
And it happens.
Speaker 2
So Hugh, from your perspective, I also wonder what you're taking away from this and what the high level thoughts are for you that are coming up?
Speaker 1
One thing that I keep thinking, listening to this is from personal experience and then empathizing with the array is that a profession of very, it's a very bad at planning this, the the days at making this easier for employees as clinic owners and clinic managers.
And it's the system.
That's why the system is set up.
It's a, it's a low profit margin business.
So you got to squeeze in as much as you can in the day.
So it's very hard for a business owner to say, no, you can't squeeze in that emergency and raise 10 minute break that he had planned.
But I still think we should.
I think as a profession, as a profession, we need to grow up and go.
We do not have to run the the way you described.
I do not have to make great work a 12 hour shift because poor Ray has a life outside of that and nobody.
I experienced this because I've got my 2 lives.
I have my clinical job one or two days a week and then I have my podcasting days and my online business.
And the difference in how I put it this way, when I do a clinical day and it's a busy day, which is a standard GP day that keeps me away from home for, you know, from when I leave home until I get back off in 12 hours, I feel it the next day because the next day is so dependent on being sharp, being energetic, because I have to be self driven, because it's just me, I'm the boss, I don't have the gun to my head.
I have to sit at my computer and decide to work.
And the day after a clinical shift is always predictably noticeably much harder because I've spent so much energy on that previous day.
And then I cannot stop thinking about all of my colleagues who do this four or five days a week and then are surprised that they are burnt out, tired and no energy to do anything else.
I'm like, there's something inherently wrong.
You can I always say it's like the, it's a, it's an extreme metaphor, but the, it's the First World War when they had the trench warfare and they made people go over the top and ran into machine gunfire.
It's a bit like saying, well, let's train those soldiers better to be more resilient and to be tougher and to improve their aim.
But we're still sending them into machine gunfire.
It's just not going to work.
So I do feel like I love the things we're discussing and they do work at 1%, but I wish we could start editing the 99% dramatically as well.
Anyway, that's my my soapbox.
Empowering Vets: Systemic Change & Personal Thresholds
No, if we were speaking with the clinic owner, it'd be a very different conversation because it would be coming more from the system's level down to the personal.
And it is admittedly very harder to swing it from the personal up.
But the truth is, is that you can.
And I think, I hope that everybody who's listening here, here's a very simple message, which is when you focus on the one percents that you can control and you keep stacking those up, it might seem so small that it's meaningless, right?
And then it seems so small that it's like picking, you know, change up off the street.
Like, what does it matter?
Is it even worth picking it up?
But if you do it enough and there's a compounding effect, you start to get into a place where you're like, wow, I actually can feel a little bit of a difference.
I can feel I'm a little bit less tired.
I can feel that I'm a little bit more able to be myself after work.
So I would say don't sleep on the benefit of the 1% changes and controlling those things that you can.
I'll just squeeze one more thing in, Ray, and then I'm going to pass it to you.
And also, just don't underestimate that every clinic owner of the world is probably just praying that their teen cares enough to suggest systems improvements, right?
You know, the, I would say most of the clients that I've had that were clinic owners would love that and would really, you know, heartily embrace the kind of employee who cared enough to suggest a system improvement even if I didn't take it.
Anyways, over to you, Ray.
Speaker 3
But yeah, no, I really I agree with that.
The 1% thing can already feel a few things coming to mind that I've thought about in the past about what can make things go a bit more smoothly through the day.
Just like even something as small as like the naming of appointments, what the presenting complaint is adding a reason.
Like sometimes I'll, I'll see my schedule and the scheduling that we use has color-coded consults and it means specific consult, but like you can still not know exactly what they're coming in for unless a reason is written.
And sometimes it's not.
So that something there that's, that's just like one of the things that popped up.
But I do like the set a goal, but remove expectation that you said, because I think every time I set a goal, I set myself a deadline and then as a result, I don't do it and I get anxiety about it.
So yeah, that would be helpful if I could kind of shift my mindset to not be so hard on myself, I guess, because that's, I feel like that's a big downfall for me is I am my worst critic.
And I'm sure a lot of other people are also the worst critics.
But yeah, it seems to hinder me a lot more than I would like.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
And I would just say that's all energy, right.
So the thing with time is we can measure it.
We can measure our time.
I took longer, I took shorter.
When we are draining energy, say feeling guilty or punishing ourselves or having a shattered expectation, that cost is paid.
It's just that it's really hard to detect where it gets paid.
And so one of the things I encourage my clients to do is get mad.
Get frustrated, but don't get mad or frustrated at yourself.
Direct all of that energy towards a solution, no matter how small.
Do not inflict that upon yourself, or heaven forbid, you're inflicting on the people you work with either.
Or even worse, come home at night and inflict it upon your loved ones.
Right?
It's OK to get mad and frustrated, but direct all of that energy like a laser beam at even one small thing.
Slash maybe the big thing that could make a difference.
Speaker 1
Can I add something just with addressing the the systemic things as an employee?
No, yes, employee, not employer.
But it can feel daunty because you go while I'm there All in all day.
I don't have time to do this.
I want to change this thing but I don't have time to do it and I'm going to do it for free.
And I actually say to people, I say to younger vets, go to your boss, identify the biggest problem, do the maths on what fixing that would be worth to the business and actually go to the boss and say I want to take this on as a project.
Can I have 2-3 hours a week not on the clinic floor where I can work on this in work hours?
And I'm going to, if I fix this, I'm going to save you $120,000 a year in fees.
And if I fix it, can you pay me half of what I save you or 20% of what I save you in addition to my wage or something?
And like pitch it as a business idea.
If you can solve your problem, you're going to solve a lot of other people's problem.
It's going to solve a big problem for your buyers.
And that's worth money because otherwise, if you take on one of these things, you're just going to add another to do to your list and feel more overwhelmed and disappointed with yourself because you're not getting around to doing it, but like, time to do it and take it seriously as part of your job helps a lot.
Speaker 2
Every single clinic owner should say yes to that.
But you know, also just don't forget that if I had a machine where you could put $10 in and it spent $100 out, I would just keep feeding money into that machine until it stopped working.
And so if you can invest 15 minutes, even if it's on your own time to get 15 minutes back every single week or 30 minutes back every single week, you know, there is a selfish incentive to just do it.
Even if you can't convince your clinic owner that it benefits you because it's just selfishly, it makes your life better.
And in fact, what you'll see with a lot of my clients who go through my boot camp is once they've changed all the things they can in their direct area of control, they'll often go outside of their area of control and build a system outside of their area control.
Somebody who worked in Australia for a BIG4 global bank, she started going to her cross functional teams and building systems for those teams and they looked at her like she was like Mother Teresa and only she knew that it was actually extremely selfish.
This cross functional team's inability to manage their pipeline was creating problems for her and was creating emergencies for her.
So in her mind, she was like, I'm not doing this for the business, I'm actually doing this because you're bad planning is constituting my emergencies.
And so I'm doing this for my own sanity and my workflow as much as anybody else.
But she actually did get a huge award and got flown out to meet the CEO and everything.
So she was seen as like that amazing employee, but secretly deep, deep, deep, deep down, it was selfish.
She was fixing the system because it was just creating so much collateral damage in her life.
Speaker 3
That's definitely something to think about because I have, I always have those little thoughts throughout the and throughout the day that's like, this could be done better, this could be done better and they're fleeting, so I forget them feel like riding them down would be a good idea.
He.
Speaker 2
What you said, what I thought was really profound was, you know, how many clinic owners would say yes to, hey, could I have an hour a week or two hours a week just to improve processes?
Would you be OK with that?
Just give me an hour or two just to create systems, you know, build something out, create better processes.
Here.
I've here's, I've got this list as long as my arm and I'm going to tackle it from the easy stuff to the medium hard stuff to the hard stuff.
And I'll, I'll just try to track where we're getting efficiencies in this.
You know, again, you're not just doing it out of the kindness of your heart, you're doing it.
That list is going to be ordered by the things that affect you the most to the things that affect you the least.
So there really is a selfish benefit here, Raymond.
I'm going to pass it to you as we wrap up here.
If you were just to pick out one or two things that are just standing out for you, maybe one or two ideas that you're having or one or two themes that we talked about, what do you think that would be?
Speaker 3
Well, I think like you said earlier, the 1% I can control, that's actually something that has hit home for me because I don't know it, I've thought about it before, but like I haven't really put it into words of the 1% I can control.
There are things I can control at work and I always say to myself, like, oh, why isn't this being done?
It would be so much easier for me if this was being done before an appointment or whatever.
And that's absolutely something that I could ask a receptionist or a nurse to do.
It's not it's, it's something that's doable, I think.
And instead of just being like, oh, why isn't this being fixed and expecting someone else to figure it out, taking it upon myself whenever I have a little bit of free time.
So that's AI really like that one.
And then?
Speaker 2
You know, I'll put, I'll put a little cheesy saying on that upstream change beats downstream effort, upstream change beats downstream effort.
So 1% sounds great, but sometimes it is a moment to step away and say, hey, maybe I need to take one or two steps upstream so I can do less effort downstream.
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely.
I was just thinking also the expectations through the day.
I think completing tasks with the expectation that there is going to be chaos upcoming would be beneficial for me because I feel like if I don't have a ton through the day, the work spreads itself out to fill that day.
If I treat it like there's going to be something coming in, I could truly have like, I'll always be ready, I guess.
Like I won't have a task that I was about to work on and then an emergency comes in and it's like, oh, well, now I have to do that later.
And that would prevent, I think, a lot of stress for me.
Speaker 2
And as a bonus, prepare you very well to have kids.
If you think you're going to have kids soon in life, fair enough.
Speaker 1
Nothing will prepare you for that.
Speaker 2
You're so right.
Speaker 1
I, I'm asking this not as a proctivity coach, but as an experienced veterinarian who's been through a lot of this, right?
Is it possible if you say you get home at 9, is that because your work shift requires that?
Or are you staying late after work?
Like are you staying back to do things?
Basically the question, is there any way that you can work a little bit less as well?
Whether that's an hour shorter negotiating with your employer or and a half a day, an extra half a day off.
I don't know.
The driver for how much we work is very often how much money we need to earn to repay student loans and whatever.
But I just asked because the biggest change for me and my experience of entering practice is not just doing so bloody much of it.
And I I've heard a lot of people say the same thing.
The difference from a 50 hour vid week to a 30 hour vid week means hating it or actually really enjoying it.
Speaker 3
I, it has been a recent change that I do these 12 hour shifts.
But what I was figuring and I, I, I proved it like I was asked beforehand, but what the major thing was, was that I felt like even on my like when I was doing shorter shifts, I do have an about a 30 minute to an hour depending on traffic commute both ways.
So I guess now part of the reason I get home so late is the commute.
But I do finish around 8:00 but I will sometimes stay late.
I just a couple of days ago, I stayed till I was at the clinic till 9:30 because I, I saw, I've reflected on the case, but it was just AI probably could have split it up, but I just dealt with it at that point and they came in 30 minutes before close, but.
I felt on the days before the shift changed to longer that even though I was getting on a little bit earlier, I still didn't feel like doing anything.
So I was like, well why don't I just have an extra day off every other week and instead get home and feel like doing nothing later?
Speaker 1
No, I, I I get it.
No, no.
So you basically the swing was you gave yourself an extra off day, which I don't think that's a bad idea.
I think that I don't know any any comments on that?
Speaker 2
It's going to be completely feel.
I've had clients who just realized that you know, there is this non linear aspect of work.
Have you have you ever you had that moment where you said I should stop work now, but then there's that one thing that took just 30 more minutes.
And if you'd left work, you knew you would have left in a good mood, but you stayed that extra 30 minutes and somehow the entire jar of milk soured just in that you just felt yourself go over the edge in that little extra bit of work that you did.
And so I would just, I would open Ray up to the idea of like looking internally for where that that moment hits.
And it could hit not just inside of a day, but in a week.
If I work these many days consecutively, or if I work these many hours inside of one day, there can often be these sort of tipping moments where you sort of learn about yourself.
Oh, it's, it's exactly 9 hours, 9 1/2 hours.
Boy, if I work past 9 1/2 hours, I've done this on my week.
If I work, there's something that happens between 30 and 35 hours a week where I just get sort of like into a bad version of myself right now.
Can I?
Of course, I can work much longer hours, but if I work under 30 hours a week or around 30 hours a week, I am just a really happy boy.
I was just like the best version of myself.
And so I have these little thresholds where it's like at 27, I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
At 30, I'm super happy.
At 33, I'm starting to get grumpy.
By 35, I'm coming home and even if I'm still awake, I'm just pissy and grumpy.
And so you can find those thresholds, not because some productivity coach told you, but simply because you're actually paying more attention and just feeling into your energy and, and looking at how the days are going.
So I would just say he would.
The only thing I would say is, you know, if you don't fall over that Cliff, yeah, you know, pick whatever number suits you.
And I think some people will say I'll work the longer hours and take the extra day off.
And some people say, you know what, I'm so grumpy from the extra hours that I'm just grumpy on my day off.
I'm going to go back to the the shorter hours.
You made a face, Ray.
Yeah.
I wonder what that's about.
I often.
Speaker 3
Feel my like first day off is just a waste.
Speaker 1
Because I don't do it.
But when, when Demi was talking earlier about that, because we function on such high cortisol level, I think it's a cocktail of cortisol and adrenaline and double meat.
And also it's, and I don't know if you experienced the same Ray, but we take a holiday and I'm going to go away for a week and have a great time and I've got all this activity, this plan.
But for the first three days I'm depressed.
I can't move, I can't get out of bed.
And I'm like, what the Hell's wrong with it?
I'm supposed to have fun.
And I think it's that hangover, that hormone neurotransmitter hangover.
And yes, I agree it is finding the finding your sweet spot.
But it's so interesting to be hearing you say 30 hours now for most of it's listening to this, I'm like, who gets to work 30 hours?
That's a holiday that's not work.
But but I I agree with my podcasting work and everything else I do way more, but it's necessity.
But the goal is, I know I need to get it back because I exactly experience that because it becomes less fun doing the same thing too much.
It's too taxing, and then you don't enjoy it.
So how do you not like veterinary signs?
Well, you do too much of it.
I tell the story of I love surfing.
That gives me great joy.
But I've gone on surf trips to perfect surf destinations where you spend thousands of dollars to go surfing.
So you feel like you have to surf all day every day.
And by day 4, I'm sick of it.
I don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 2
I mean, remember, this is from somebody who used to work 80 to 100 hours a week and gave themselves a chronic stress related illness that almost killed me.
So been there, done that.
But you know, I, I often say if you want to live happier than a billionaire, even if I, you know, hit the Lotto and won a billion dollars, I'd still want to program a day for myself where I had four to five hours of meaningful work.
So a lot of people don't have that luxury.
Totally understand this is not about rubbing salt, but it's just sort of saying that I think sometimes when we're working too much, the fantasy is working nothing.
We actually realize that really, even people who don't have to work anymore often find themselves in a place where they will give themselves four to five hours of good work because that is a good day.
A great day includes 4 to 5 meaningful hours of working on something that you love, even if you don't need the money.
Final Thoughts and Where to Find More Productivity Help
For people who do want to follow up, I'm going to be one of those people, Where do we find you?
To me, what's the best place to keep learning from you?
Speaker 2
Oh man, thank you so much for having me here and thank you, Ray, for just opening yourself up and sharing the details of your life.
I really appreciate it.
Anybody who wants to follow us, we have we're at lifehackmethod com.
There's a free training on planning a week to win your week.
We didn't get into that, but it's the Wall Street Journal best selling book that we wrote winning the week.
So for those of you who want to learn a little bit more about us and learn a bit more about the smallest thing you could do to get the most time back, check out the website lifehackmatha.com.
Speaker 1
Right, thank you so much for being brave and putting your hand up and being vulnerable.
I, if I, if I, I kept laughing when I listen to you.
It wasn't laughing at you.
It just just because it's so familiar.
I'm like, yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
And I think our listeners will feel the same.
And I thank you for for for letting us use you as a as a template.
Speaker 3
Thank you for having me, it was really good to be here.
Speaker 1
Before you disappear, I wanted to tell you about my weekly newsletter.
I speak to so many interesting people and learn so many new things while making the clinical podcast.
So I thought I'd create a little summary each week of the stuff that stood out for me.
We call it the Vet Vault 321 and it consists of three clinical pearls.
These are three things that I've taken away from making the clinical podcast episodes, my light bulb moments.
Two other things.
These could be quotes, links, movies, books, a podcast highlight, maybe even from my own podcast.
Anything that I've come across outside of clinical vetting that I think that you might find interesting.
And then one thing to think about, which is usually something that I'm pondering this week and that I'd like you to ponder with me.
If you'd like to get these in your inbox each week, then follow the newsletter link in the show description wherever you're listening.
It's free and I'd like to think it's useful.
OK, we'll see you next time.
Demir Bentley